National Edition |
May 6, 2015

San Francisco’s Nootrobox offers a subscription service for smart drugs

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Performance-enhancing drugs are familiar to anyone who’s witnessed super-sized professional athletes or finals-cramming college students. It turns out the world of better living through chemistry doesn’t have to involve a 22-inch neck.

San Francisco’s Nootrobox offers a subscription service for smart drugs. But don’t confuse the company with some Silk Road style black market. Also known as nootropics, the performance-enhancing nutrient pills from Nootrobox are entirely street legal and even allowed in competitive sports.

The startup offers two products: Rise, which promises to improve memory, focus, and energy, and Sprint, for energy and clarity.

Founded by a Stanford computer science graduate and an ex-Googler, Nootrobox launched in July last year and is selling “five-figures” worth of supplements every month, according to cofounder Geoffrey Woo.

Unsurprisingly, the bulk of those sales come from Bay Area residents. “There’s a lot of interest from start-ups,” Woo said. “The use case matches really well with engineers who need to crank out code.”

A monthly supply of the Rise stack will run you $26.10, and a 10-count bottle of Sprint costs $13.50. You can pick them up here

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